SpaceX IPO hype spurs crypto shadow market for pre-listing bets

As SpaceX edges closer to what could be the largest initial public offering in history, a corner of the crypto market is already pricing the debut — and recent history suggests the numbers are worth watching.

Traders are turning to perpetual futures, contracts with no expiry, to take a position on a company’s expected listing price months before an IPO. These contracts tracking Elon Musk’s aerospace giant launched this month and have averaged nearly $18 million in daily trading volume over two weeks.

Unlike a stock, the contracts offer no legal claim on the underlying company and carry ongoing costs to hold. Yet last month, the same instruments anticipated the Cerebras Systems IPO with notable precision. Trade.xyz launched its contract at $175, when the range was set at $115 to $125. The deal ultimately priced at $185. An hour before the Nasdaq opened, the perp was at $340; Cerebras shares opened at $350, according to a report from Castle Labs.

One data point doesn’t make a track record. But proponents point to Cerebras as evidence that these markets can aggregate real demand signals before a listing opens to the public, rather than just generate speculative noise.

What began as a workaround for retail traders wanting exposure to hot artificial intelligence startups is drawing serious attention. Major exchanges including Binance, Bitget and OKX have all launched similar products this year.

“Pre-IPO has historically been a club for accredited investors and private funds,” said Lloyd Lee, chief executive officer of crypto hedge fund Hyperithm. “Crypto rails are opening that door to anyone with a wallet.”

ADVERTISEMENT

CONTINUE READING BELOW

Measured by volume, the market for this kind of synthetic exposure remains small. SpaceX perp trading is measured in millions, while the company aims to raise as much as $75 billion at a $1.8 trillion valuation, Bloomberg has reported.

Trade.xyz launched its perp tracking SpaceX on May 18, and it has recently been trading around $200. The company filed publicly for an IPO on May 20, using a plan to allot super-voting shares to Musk to allow the billionaire to retain control.

Interest in exposure to pre-IPO stocks through tokenized assets was already on the rise amid surging valuations for AI startups such as Anthropic and OpenAI. However, the Cerebras debut sharpened interest in the SpaceX contracts.

Part of the appeal of these products revolves around the idea of democratizing access. Retail investors often have limited access to major IPOs, with only a small pool of shares typically set aside for individuals.

ADVERTISEMENT:

CONTINUE READING BELOW

Tokenized products are also available in many markets where access to the stock would be difficult.

“Globally, less than 10% of the population has direct access to US equities, and access to pre-IPO is far narrower,” Hyperithm’s Lee said. “For traders outside the few jurisdictions with established financial infrastructure, access to these assets through perpetual futures is significant progress.”

Given that a perp is not the same as a stock, though, it comes with idiosyncratic risks. In one recent incident on the Ventuals platform, an incorrect input of SpaceX pricing data triggered the liquidation of some users’ positions.

We are aware of an incident on our SPACEX market about an hour ago.

The offchain data provider used as a component of the oracle price returned incorrect data, which caused the market’s oracle and mark price to move dramatically. This led to the liquidation of some user…

— Ventuals (@ventuals) May 28, 2026

Luca Parlamento, portfolio manager at D2 Finance, framed trading perps as a basis trade — exploiting a price difference between two related assets. In other words, investors are betting on how the price gap will change according to demand, scarcity and liquidity ahead of an IPO.

ADVERTISEMENT:

CONTINUE READING BELOW

“Pre-IPO perpetuals collapse part of that window into a public order book before the bell rings,” Parlamento said. “They are not a replacement for accredited secondary plumbing. They are a retail-accessible venue for trading the IPO opening basis in real time.”

Still, there is no tradable stock to arbitrage against before the listing. Funding rates may also distort returns, while settlement depends on contract rules and the mechanics of the oracles, which manage access to stock-pricing data. A sharp move could say more about retail flow imbalance than a company’s fundamental value.

Despite this, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said SpaceX perps traders appear to be positioning for the long term. “There is a real cohort of users who are holding the exposure rather than immediately flipping it,” she said.

Trade.xyz’s SpaceX perp, priced in the dollar stablecoin USDC, currently has more than $50 million in open interest.

Perps may not make retail traders early SpaceX investors, but they are getting something they never had before: a live price to trade before a public liftoff.

© 2026 Bloomberg

#SpaceX #IPO #hype #spurs #crypto #shadow #market #prelisting #bets